


The Transience of Winter

by emeralddarkness



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, F/M, emotions? never heard of her, hanahaki
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29097234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeralddarkness/pseuds/emeralddarkness
Summary: Plum blossoms are a symbol of winter, but they are also a harbinger of spring.
Relationships: Higurashi Kagome/Sesshoumaru, non endgame Higurashi Kagome/Inuyasha
Kudos: 19





	1. In which we make our beginning

Sesshoumaru was not accustomed to showing weakness, and so he did not.

He wasn’t sure when it started anymore; he hadn’t even realized at first what was happening to him, beyond his thoughts somehow cycling back to the miko with far greater frequency than they should have. He’d have liked to say that she was like any other girl (life would be so much easier if she had been like any other girl) but that had never been the case.

The truth was that he had dismissed her initially – just another human, a worthless girl who’d somehow leashed his worthless half brother – and she had immediately shown him the error in this way of thinking by first surviving his poison, and directly continuing from that to take a not immaterial role in the loss of one of his arms. He should have hated her for that, but the astonishment at what she had done and not done in his presence had been strong enough to prevent the most natural reaction. She was a surprise.

This was where she stood in his mind at their second encounter, where he had dained to avoid targeting her directly until she had attacked _him_ , shooting clumsily with shining arrows that made his skin prickle in their passing, which made his armor crack and crumble like pottery, which so purged the power of his father’s fang that it had been minutes before it was able to transform again. She’d been annoying, dangerous, but also something fresh and unpredictable, and fearless as she’d been before. That, perhaps, was why Inuyasha had been so enamored with her. He told himself that was pathetic; and again, that should have been the end of it. He’d forced himself to dismiss the thought of her and focus on the business of getting a worthy sword until he came to find Toutousai and found Inuyasha. She’d been standing next to the mutt still, eyes blue-grey as a winter morning and clad only in the little scrap of nothing she apparently considered proper attire, staring up at him in shock, perhaps dread, but without being afraid of him. It was distracting. It was frustrating. He wondered what all these gathered here would think, if they’d known he wondered if this little nothing of a girl was the most dangerous of their number, simply by virtue of the fact that nothing seemed able to make her _stop_. Something about her made it hard to focus, harder to find perfect control. It was partially the frustration of that which on the next encounter had baited him into beginning to unveil his power, and that in turn had made it easier for Inuyasha to scent out the hidden pathways of the wind, which led to the closest he’d ever come to death.

Her eyes, alarmed but unfrightened, were the last thing he saw before he’d been caught in what felt like a hurricane of swords and thrown to a forest so soaked in the scent of his own blood that he’d been unable to smell anything else of his surroundings.

Sesshoumaru was more a creature of action than of thought – there was something about the hunt that was soothing: the scent of blood in the air, the constant assurance of a purpose and steady movement – but after a brush with Tetsusaiga’s power he’d been left with nothing but his thoughts for company as muscle and bone slowly knitted back together. It was hard not to think of her as he lay there helpless; it became harder when the second human who was wholly unafraid of him found him and dumped water on him, then tried to give him fish and lizards and mushrooms and mice. Sesshoumaru wondered how the miko would have acted if she’d found him like this. He was an enemy, he’d proven that to her several times over, and so if she was wise she would kill him, but he couldn’t picture her doing so. It was easy to imagine her instead in the trees, hesitant when she saw him, then approaching slowly, maybe acting as the little peasant girl had and doing her best to take care of him when she’d found he couldn’t move. His fingers twitched slightly at the thought, annoyed, because he did not and never had required a nursemaid, but… he did not think that snarling or snapping would chase her away any more than it had the girl who had found him.

Then again, she’d not shown any particularly soft tendencies in the few times he’d seen her so far, other than perhaps her penchant for throwing herself in front of him to try and protect another of her party. Judging by those interactions he would have assumed her favorite thing was to place herself in the path of death… and yet somehow she survived, even thrived. She never even seemed injured. Inuyasha wasn’t responsible for all that by himself, he couldn’t be. His half brother was barely able to defend himself; he’d have a difficult time doing that as well as protecting some girl with a death wish.

Her aura had grown brighter every time he’d seen her, from the faint sparks of power that any midwife or herb woman might have to a flame, bright and shining at her heart.

She was dangerous.

This was stupid.

He was wasting his time.

He deliberately ignored the fact that, at the moment, he had nothing but time to waste.

After the first half day or so healing he was able to shift a little without excruciating pain, and had done so several times to arrange himself slightly more comfortably over the course of the next few days. Something in his chest tickled as these thoughts ran again through his head so he shifted again, grimacing slightly. He’d thought he was beyond coughing blood, as he had in the first few hours, but maybe not yet. He suppressed the urge as long as he could, but every breath made it worse until he gave in and coughed again. No blood, but the urge to cough remained until he finally spat out a flower petal that must have fallen into his mouth.

It took a moment for him to realize and accept that this little thing was what had been making him cough, and he was almost surprised at how much the realization annoyed him. Something about the idea that the very flowers were managing to attack him like this when he was already so weak seemed unacceptably offensive. Sesshoumaru glared down at the little white petal that lay limp and wet on his palm before curling his claws inwards and calling on their poison. It dissolved in a rush, and he flicked the remnants off his skin before glaring up at the trees.

The sooner he was well enough to leave this place the better he’d be pleased.

-

Jaken finally found him just as Sesshoumaru was finally feeling well enough to move again, perhaps fight a little at need, which meant consideration of if he felt well enough to travel any distance became irrelevant. Ah-un would be close behind, with supplies and a saddle that could if necessary carry him away; the little imp dancing nervously at his feet and begging him not to strain himself could mean nothing else.

Sesshoumaru stood carefully and took stock of himself, ignoring Jaken’s squawking. Something uncomfortable remained deep in his lungs and he was still painfully, alarmingly weak, but he dismissed both sensations - he knew better than to think he’d so soon be in the same condition he’d been in before this mess. He would continue to improve. More immediately he was filthy and covered in blood, wearing clothing that was in even worse condition than the rest of him and the last few remnants of his shattered armor, and deeply unhappy about all of it. That, at least, could be changed. First to the dragon and his supplies, and from there to bathe and begin repairs on his armor. It was nice to be able to act again.

With a path once again set for himself and, finally, the ability to act on any plans, Sesshoumaru lifted his head to scent the way to Ah-un and instead found a surprise. The powdery scent of the dragon _was_ there, maybe five or ten minutes away at a walk, but the first thing he smelled was the sharp iron tang of fresh human blood. Beneath the blood, and almost overpowered by it, was the musk of wolves. An attack on a human village, perhaps? Turning to find the source he saw the bushes that the girl, the peasant, had always disappeared beyond. An attack on _her_ village, perhaps. He found himself strangely disquieted by the idea.

Without thinking, Sesshoumaru turned and followed the girl’s scent, and the scent of blood, and wolves, out from the forest and onto a little dirt road. As he approached the scent of blood and humanity he began hearing the pack sounds - yipping and whimpering and growling among themselves to meanings he didn’t care to try and decipher. Soon after he saw them. There were maybe five or six wolves on the road ahead of him, clustered together and snarling, and as he stepped closer he could see that they were surrounding a little corpse, and were arguing over who had the rights to eat it.

It was her.

He acted before considering that it was useless; his eyes narrowed into a glare as he loosed a touch of his youki. As one the wolves cringed back, then turned and fled before the flash of power and danger, which meant they were of no further interest to him. Instead he looked again at the little body, and thought of a miko with storm colored eyes, and the way that neither she nor this girl had ever seemed to be afraid of him. It was a pity, because that fearlessness deserved better than lying bloodsoaked and dead on a packed dirt road, unknown and unremembered. The child had done her best to take care of him, poor as those efforts had been. He remembered her smile when he’d asked her how she’d been injured. He’d never known her either. It was a pity. She had deserved better.

From behind him Jaken asked if he wanted something with the girl. He quietly dismissed the question, but when he’d turned from her to leave he found he wasn’t able to make himself walk away. Her smile, and the way he’d been unable to make her run from him, and another girl climbing from a mess of poison and melted bone and yelling at him, and his father, and his _mother_ , and the sword at his hip - a thousand things were running through his mind. As he stood, unable to act and unable to leave, he wondered when he had started doubting himself. For him it wasn’t really too late, unless he wished it to be.

Tenseiga seemed to pulse at his hip as he turned back and drew it, and by its power saw the pallbearers of the dead. _Interesting,_ he thought, finding as he saw them how a sword that did not cut might be able to raise the dead. He swept the sword through them to test this new theory, and as they crumbled into wind he heard the girl’s heart begin to beat, and her first shuddering breath. _Very interesting,_ he decided, and knelt down next to the girl as her body readjusted to the processes of living and healed itself. Gently he lifted her off the road.

It was very odd, to find such satisfaction in a sword that had nothing to do with killing, an heirloom that he’d always assumed to be his father somehow mocking him, after having spent so much of his formative years teaching him how to kill. Perhaps there was something of value there after all. He was used to inspiring fear, but as the peasant girl looked up at him with confusion and wonder but no fear in her brown-black eyes he wondered for the first time if he truly was missing something, to live that way. Deliberately, again, he shoved down thoughts of the other girl, with her arrows and her fearlessness, and decided he might as well take this one with him, just to see. He was not in the habit of doubting himself, and he refused to start now.


	2. In which Kagome is determined

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several notes: firstly chapter 1 has been refined a bit. The beats remain the same, you won't get lost if you don't reread, but it has changed a little! Secondly: the base timeline here is a little stretched out compared to canon and Kagome is a little older, 16 instead of 15. She and Sango are about the same age. Thirdly, thanks are owed to my friend Tracy for looking this over for me, and to Ith and Tea for reassuring me I wasn't way off the mark with a couple characters I'd not done much with in a while.

Kagome Higurashi knew that she was not exactly useless, but as far as she could see things, she wasn’t exactly useful either. She was able to detect the shards, bright shining points that rubbed against her consciousness, but what else could she do, really?

She’d had intermittent nightmares since she’d first come here, about being burned alive or beheaded or melted or flunking out of high school, but for the last couple days all her bad dreams had been one memory – that terrible moment the monster Goushinki had grabbed Tetsusaiga in his teeth and snapped in half. The sword was so powerful, and Inuyasha had relied on it for so long in their adventures after she had pulled it from its pedestal for him, that watching the pieces and chips fall from the ogre’s mouth as he laughed had been like watching a death. He was too fast for her bow, but she still would have tried to shoot him if he’d not been staring over with eyes like burning coals and murmuring her own thoughts to her. She had been frozen as Inuyasha was caught and broken almost as badly as his father’s Fang. All she could see as he fell and lay there was a little bundle of bloodstained red, and all she could hear was the sound of Goushinki’s calm words and laughter in a voice so low and dark that it felt like the earth shifting under her.

She needed to try to shoot anyway. Everyone was going to die. Kagome was sure she was hyperventilating. She tried to run to Inuyasha and Goushinki, to protect or to purify she hardly knew which, and instead watched as Miroku jumped in front of her, and as he was swept carelessly to the side to the sound of more laughter. As the monster loomed over her and declared intention to eat her first, the harmless one, the knowledge of her helplessness cut into her like a knife.

This first part of the dream was true enough to her memory, but things always began to change when Inuyasha pushed himself to his feet and started laughing in a rippling snicker that sounded like a growl. When it had really happened, Inuyasha had leapt forward in a crimson blur and ripped Goushinki’s limbs off, ripped his head off, ripped his spine from his body in a shower of gore that left the whole area black and swampy with blood, and Kagome had managed to wake him of whatever madness he’d fallen into with subjugation. What happened in the dreams varied. 

Sometimes he killed the children who’d spent the fight huddled behind him for protection from the monster, not knowing the monster was now him. Sometimes he killed her, and she woke in a sweat with a phantom pain of claws digging through her ribcage and bursting her heart. Sometimes he killed no one but Goushinki, but he laughed as he did, and as he finally looked at her with bright red eyes and bright red claws and fangs flashing merrily in a wide smile she knew in her heart that he was gone, and he would not return again. These last were the ones that made her cry.

As a memory there was very little to recommend it, as a dream there was absolutely nothing. Kagome was sick of it, and was sick of waking up and feeling too weak and useless to do anything, with screams trapped in her throat and tears caught on her lashes. And, after the same stupid dream for almost a week straight, Kagome decided that she’d had enough. They weren’t going anywhere while Tetsusaiga was repaired, and she’d done all the homework that she could make herself care enough to do without knowing she’d have to turn it in in the next few days.

“Miroku-sama?” she asked just after breakfast, as the two of them made their way down to the little stream a few hundred meters from their camp with her entire stock of water bottles.

“Mm?”

“Um…. Since we’re stuck here already I was… hoping maybe I could get some lessons.”

She’d been a little hesitant in asking, unsure what the differences between her and his power even were, but before she’d had a chance to ask if it would be possible he’d turned to her and grasped her hands, pulling them close to his heart as he soulfully looked into her eyes. All the water bottles dropped around them with hollow thumps. Kagome stifled a groan.

“Kagome-sama, if you want to spend more time alone with me you don’t need to couch it in any other request.”

From the top of the hill she heard a sound of outrage from Inuyasha, and had to keep from rolling her eyes as she fought down a blush.

“It doesn’t have to be alone,” she clarified, pulling her hands free and starting to pick the bottles up again. “And I’m not sure you _can_ help, but I can’t ever get long enough with Kaede-sama or anyone to really work on anything, and I’m tired of… of not being able to do anything in all these fights we keep having.”

Miroku, picking up bottles himself, let out a noise that sounded like a snort, and Kagome’s spine immediately snapped straight in outrage. “Is there something funny about that?” she demanded, glaring at him.

Miroku kept grabbing bottles a few moments more, apparently not listening, but just as Kagome decided she should chuck an empty water bottle at his head and see if he reacted to _that_ he straightened again and looked at her. His entire expression was soft.

“My lady,” he finally said quietly, “there is not a one of us here today who would be alive if _not_ for your doing something. I do not know what you are asking for.”

Kagome’s temper settled immediately and she had to hold back another blush, half shame for doubting him and half embarrassment at the praise.

“I guess,” she mumbled under her breath as she picked up the last bottle, then finished the walk to the stream, trying to gather her thoughts as she did. She started to speak as she unscrewed the first lid and bent to fill the container, still distracted by trying to put her thoughts into words. “I’m just… tired of only being able to _do_ anything when I’ve got a bow. The only other thing I can do is find shards, and that’s not any use when there aren’t any around. I was hoping maybe you could help me learn to sense youki like you do, or maybe put up a barrier. Being able to purify things without arrows would be awfully nice…”

Lost in half formed ideas of concepts she only half understood, Kagome didn’t stop to consider that bending over like this meant that her rear end was on display until she felt a hand slide over it, then begin to rub in brisk circles. She shot upright again with a shriek; as a rough growl sounded from the hilltop and she saw a flash of red. The timing worked out poorly for everyone.

Miroku was too close to Kagome for Inuyasha to land between them without knocking at least one of them over so instead he landed just behind her, but in the same moment that he moved to grab her around the torso and physically yank her out of the way Kagome was spinning around to slap the pervert with the wandering hands. As she slapped, Inuyasha grabbed, and his hands landed precisely on her breasts.

Kagome froze. Inuyasha froze. Miroku stared, and despite the redness of his cheek a slow smile began to spread across his face.

"H-hang on,” Inuyasha said, jerking his hands away a couple seconds too late and taking a hasty step back. “Hang on just a-”

“Sit! Sit sit sit sit sit sit sit sit _sit_!”

Inuyasha crashed to the ground with the first word and each subsequent use of the command drove him a little further down; by the time she was done he was half buried in the soft ground at the bank, and her face was the same color as his robes.

“I was trying to help you, you bitch!” he snarled as he started pushing himself up again, spitting mud. Kagome, crimson with humiliation, chucked the half-full water bottle at Miroku as hard as she could, then turned and ran up the hill again. Behind her Miroku grunted as he was hit in the stomach, then examined the spreading water marks wryly for a moment before going to stand next to Inuyasha.

“It was worth it my friend, was it not?” he asked easily as he reached down and began to help him clean the mud off.

“Keh, speak for yourself,” he muttered. Under the mud he was almost as red as she had been.

-

“Stupid boys,” Kagome muttered furiously as she stuffed her sleeping bag back into her backpack. She was still red with mixed embarrassment and anger. “Stupid- jewel- shards- stupid- feudal- era- stupid- _argh!_ ” After several moments of fierce struggle, Kagome finally sat back on her heels and admitted to herself that getting the sleeping bag put away wasn’t happening, not without pulling it out and doing it again properly. Maybe it was just as well. She wasn’t even sure if they'd be leaving tonight, and that meant unless she was planning to storm off by herself there wasn’t any point to packing now, and she didn't think she was angry enough for that. Probably.

The real problem now was that she had at least one day of free time in front of her and no longer had any idea what to do with it. She certainly wasn’t about to ask Miroku to teach her anything again, and if she tried to do any more math her brain _would_ melt. Besides, math would do nothing to beat off the feelings of helplessness that she was so tired of. She wanted to move, and do something that felt useful. As she looked around at the bare grassy hills without really seeing them, her eyes finally fixed on the targets that Sango had set up for her practice in the downtime. Archery was useful. Especially until she figured out how better to control her powers, archery was very useful. Better yet, she realized as Sango appeared from behind a small rise, she might still be able to learn something from a source that she _didn't_ have to watch the hands of.

Considerably cheered, Kagome grabbed her bow and quiver and ran down the hill towards her friend.

"Sango-chaaaaan!"

She spent the morning practicing archery; Sango was their weapons master, and while her own boomerang was what she best loved she knew at least a little about all the others, including the bow. Meeting her had been a relief. Before Sango had joined their party Kagome had been flying mostly blind when it came to archery; early on she'd taken out a library book on proper forms and tried to practice matching them in her room, feeling awkward and ungainly and with no idea if she was doing it right, but was largely forced to rely on instinct to improve. Lessons in her own time were out of the question - she was gone too often and too long - and in the feudal era there was simply no one to teach her. Those first few months, when it had been only her and Inuyasha, any attempts to practice usually wound up as a couple frustrating hours of her trying to find a way to access a past self's mastery by sheer force of will, with Inuyasha's sarcastic comments about the superiority of Kikyo floating behind her every time her arrows missed, or she undershot - which had been often. Even after he'd toned down the criticism he'd not been much help, any more than Shippou or Miroku had when they joined. Sango had taken one look at her drawing a bow the very first morning she was up and moving again and spent the next two hours in an impromptu lesson, moving Kagome's body to correct her form and demonstrating how she should shoot, and the expertise had allowed her to begin progressing at a ferocious pace. All that was left to hamper that progress were her own human limitations.

The work had been building her strength, and Kagome had started to discover muscles she'd never even known she had when she looked in a mirror, smooth and softly defined in her arms, but several hours of practice and lessons still left her hands too cramped and arms too spent to even think of drawing another bowstring. Today she'd compounded her problems by trying to focus on her inner purity and figure out what even happened when she called a holy arrow, and the effort had left her with a blinding headache. She still tried to push through, but when she tried to fire an arrow and only managed to bend the bow far enough to send it about 2 meters before her exhausted fingers slipped she'd admitted defeat. Kagome flopped down on her back in the tall grass and moaned, weakly throwing the weapon in the vague direction of the arrow. Sango, standing above her head and upside down in her vision, peered down at her and grinned. Kagome stuck out her tongue at the other girl, who had been intermittently practicing beside her and wasn't even winded.

"Not very respectful of you," Sango observed breezily as she sat down next to Kagome's torso, and Kagome sighed. Everything Sango did was elegant, even something as simple as sitting in a field became poised. Sango carried herself with an economy of movement that Kagome had never seen in anyone else, and in moments like these she deeply envied it.

"Yeah," she grumbled, "sorry. Just… _ow_. I'm cramping up already."

"Shall I tell you what was told me when I was learning?" Sango asked, picking a tall stalk of grass and carefully shredding it into curling threads. "Pain is good for you, it keeps you awake."

Kagome groaned, and Sango laughed.

"What were you focused on today, anyway?" she asked after a moment, peeling another curling fiber from the stalk. "You seemed distracted."

Kagome sighed. "It was that obvious? I was trying to figure out… what it feels like, I guess, purifying things. I just wish I knew what I was doing even a bit more. Youkai aren't a big problem in my home century, most people don't even believe in them anymore, so when I came here and suddenly everyone was telling me I have these shrine maiden powers I didn't even know how to reach them. I _still_ don't know how, everything just… runs on autopilot, and it's making me feel useless."

Sango's expression was distant, and suddenly Kagome wondered what it felt like, to hear that in 500 odd years the demons that she and all her family had dedicated their lives to hunting were all gone. Would it be satisfying, to know that the legacy of your efforts was apparently success, or would it be lonely? Nobody needed the taijiya by the 21st century.

Kagome pushed herself up to sit next to her friend and plucked a blade of grass as she had, then absentmindedly shredded it as she spoke, dropping pieces that were short and jagged next to Sango's long, elegant curls.

"I know that I don't even _need_ arrows, because I burned Mistress Centipede's arms off when she came after me that first time when she pulled me down the well, but I've sure never been able to do that again. Maybe it's something I could only do with the jewel, I just… I just don't know enough to even know if that's possible."

"Anything's possible," Sango said with a sigh, dropping the last bit of grass and leaning back on her hands to look at the sky. "I'll admit I'm not an expert on what the jewel can and can't do - we were really only ever concerned with guarding it, not learning its properties. It was powerful, and that was enough for us."

Kagome groaned and flopped backwards again. "That's not helpful." Sango, elegant as ever, shrugged without looking down.

"I can't know everything," she said, and for a moment she sounded lonely and profound, but then she spoiled the moment by looking down and grinning. "I'm only seventeen."

Kagome laughed, and then Sango laughed and lay back next to her, and together they watched the clouds. It was decidedly nice, Kagome decided then, finally having a little bit of downtime that didn't come because someone was at death's door.

"Say, Kagome-chan," Sango said maybe twenty minutes later, still lying next to her as Kagome absentmindedly rubbed and stretched her muscles, trying to keep her arms from seizing up and being completely useless for the rest of the day.

"Mmm?"

"You already know how to sense where youkai are, don't you?"

"No," she answered carefully, curiously.

"Ah," Sango said, still watching the clouds. "Well, would you like to learn?"

-

Inuyasha had been restless all day, more even than usual, and snapped and snarled at everyone at the slightest provocation until Kagome finally snapped back and told him again to sit. After that he removed himself to the fringes of the camp and _brooded_. She'd not quite forgiven him for the morning yet, and it seemed to her that he had no right to act so brutish when she'd been the wronged party. He seemed very on edge for how little had happened since they'd come here; every rustle of wind sent his hand tapping against his hip again, as though seeking a sword that had not yet been returned. The twitchiness was starting to set Kagome's nerves on edge as well, and that made it especially hard when she was trying to focus.

"Youkai hold a coldness at their heart," Sango had explained earlier, as they'd collected her arrows and walked back to camp. "Not a coldness you feel on your skin, but one you feel in your soul. See, there," she'd said, pointing first at the red blotch perched in a tree, and then two spots on the ground, hidden by the rippling grass, "you can feel it from Inuyasha, and Kirara, and even Shippou-chan; they carry an aura of foreboding." Kagome looked at the spots that Sango pointed to. She wasn't sure if it was the power of suggestion but briefly she felt a frisson of apprehension shiver like an ice cube down her spine. In a moment it was gone.

In between making lunch, and eating, and eventually, reluctantly, studying a few more pages of math Kagome spent the day trying to meditate, stretching out her senses to try and feel those points of cold. Her sense of it sharpened as the day went on and she practiced, and when Shippou snuggled into her lap in the late afternoon with a lollipop sticking out of his mouth she had the surprising realization that she was pretty sure she _had_ always been able to sense it, that little spark of chill, but her heart had always refused to take it as a warning. Too many of her friends felt like that. It was only now, practicing, that she was starting to recognize it was there, and what it meant. Her eyes travelled from the kit in her lap up to the hanyou and focused on him, hunting again for the chill against her senses that she was finally starting to recognize.

It wasn’t there.

The realization made her blink, surprised. She’d definitely felt it earlier in the day, but now it was like his aura had vanished. The air in his direction felt no different than it did in the direction of Sango.

Moving carefully, Kagome shifted Shippou off her lap and stood, walking over to Inuyasha and settling next to him. He was huddled in his robes, hands in his sleeves and legs crossed, ears stiff with attention as he glared across the plain at the setting sun. One ear twitched towards her as she sat down, but when she didn't speak he finally turned towards her.

"What?"

He still didn't feel like anything. Kagome leaned closer, peering into his face, and nervously he edged slightly back.

"Seriously, what?" he asked again, and his ears flicked around uneasily.

"Did… did something happen? I can't feel you."

The question seemed to settle him, and with a dismissive sound he turned away and returned to watching the sun.

"Finally realized, huh?"

Kagome felt herself getting frustrated. "Clearly not, if I'm asking you about it."

His eyes lanced back towards her, almost seeming to glow in the amber light. "You can't feel me, huh? What do you think happened?" His words were heavy and flat with bitter resignation.

And, suddenly, everything clicked into place, and her lips parted in a silent o of sudden understanding and dismay.

"There's no moon tonight, is there?" she whispered, and Inuyasha looked away again, and his ears flicked back towards the horizon.

"Guess you forgot. Must be nice."

His behavior all day suddenly fell into place in her mind - he'd been so jumpy, so combative, and here was why. Kagome felt like a grade A jerk.

"Can we stay here?" she asked, and felt a little desperate as she did. It was probably too late to move, she should have asked five hours ago. A week ago.

"Keh," he grumbled, tucking down his chin and stowing his hands a little more securely in his sleeves. His ears flicked back and forth in a restless displeasure. "Not like we've got much choice. I'm not leaving until that old fart gives back my Tetsusaiga. If I up and left now maybe he'd change his mind about it."

Kagome sighed and huddled next to him, chin on her knees and fingers interwoven around them. "I'm sorry I forgot," she said, and in the stillness of the moment it was like there was no past and was no future and nothing existed at all except the two of them, and the fields of grass, and the sun creeping over the horizon.

"Wouldn't have changed anything if you remembered," he muttered. He was looking away from her, cheeks slightly flushed.

"I guess."

And the sun finally crept past the edge of the world, and at her side the white drained from Inuyasha's hair.

"Man I hate this freaking night," he muttered, finally unfurling himself as the last of the sunset faded from the sky. "Come on, Kagome. You'd better stay close to the others. I'm useless like this." She stood with him, and together they walked back to the camp.

For as jumpy as Inuyasha had been all day, and as jumpy as his vulnerability left _her_ feeling, Kagome had high hopes for an utterly uneventful night as she crawled into her sleeping bag with Shippou. Still, a thread of tension ran through the air, and she couldn't entirely dismiss the fear that someone was going to grab hold of that thread and yank. She lay there, Shippou snuggled in her arms and breathing slowly, tail occasionally twitching in his dreams, and watched the starlight reflect in Inuyasha's silvery almost human eyes as he stared out into the darkness. After a while she wondered if she’d lay there awake all night, and if she should get up and go to him instead of lying here uselessly with all her senses stretched taut. She was so tired, but Inuyasha must be tired too, and he was still awake, propped against a boulder and staring at the horizon.

She wondered if he was scared.

The hours drifted by and wrapped around the company like spider silk, and at some point Kagome gave up on sleeping and carefully untangled herself from Shippou, and climbed out of her sleeping bag as softly as she could. The little fox grumbled gently, only half awake, but did not try to follow her as she softly crept over to Inuyasha and sat against the boulder next to him.

“You should be sleeping,” he said quietly. He didn’t look at her; his eyes lingered on the horizon.

 _You’re not,_ she thought. “I can’t,” she said.

His breath rushed out in a dismissive huff, and she couldn’t quite stop herself from smiling. They sat in silence together, looking out into the dark.

Kagome hadn't intended to sleep that night, not by then, but at some point she still apparently drifted off leaning against Inuyasha’s shoulder, because what woke her was him leaping to his feet. The first thing she heard as she landed on the hard ground and was jolted back to wakefulness was a burbling laughter that sounded like it came from the lips of something already dead. For a moment, as she desperately tried to clear the cobwebs from her brain, Kagome wondered if she was having another nightmare.

“You’re Inuyasha, huh?” the horrible voice that matched the laugh asked.

“What’s it to ya, bastard?” Inuyasha asked in return, and she could hear his human vocal chords straining to snarl. “I don’t know you!”

“Just a human, huh? That’s a surprise,” the stranger said, and it sounded like rot and decay. A little frantically Kagome pushed herself up and ran to her things, scrabbling through them for her bow and arrows. Sango and Miroku were already awake, as sleep-mussed as she was but holding their weapons and standing at Inuyasha's side. “Toukijin wants to drink your blood.”

"Why don't you come and take it then, if you think you can?" Inuyasha shouted. Beside her Shippou fought his way out of the sleeping bag, his tail bushed up and bristling, and Kagome hoped he hadn’t torn it. He looked around before jumping back up to her shoulder as she grabbed her bow and scrambled back up. Her arms felt weak, still unrecovered from all that training, but she tried not to think about it. Miroku had Inuyasha by the shoulder and was holding him back from leaping forward. Kagome lunged and grabbed his free arm.

"Don't," she gasped, in the same moment as Miroku hissed, "Don't be a fool." Shippou threw himself from her shoulder to Inuyasha's and clung there like he could hold him back too. "They'll kill you if you're like this and you fight them!" he wailed, tail huge with fright. In front of them, under the pale light of the stars, Sango was already running, and as she looked across Kagome saw for the first time their enemy, a stubby little youkai with a necklace made of skulls, holding a bone-white sword.

"You aren't used to fighting in this form," Miroku continued, his voice fast and low. "Let us handle this enemy." Sango cried out as she launched her great boomerang, almost drowning out his last words.

"Hiraikotsu!"

The imp lifted the sword, and the great weapon clattered to pieces on either side of him, cloven in two. The rotting, gurgling laughter filled the air again as Sango gaped, and then he resumed his slow walk forwards.

"I forged this sword from the fangs of your enemy, Goushinki," he laughed, and in that instant suddenly Kagome wanted to throw up. "It wants revenge for you killing him, Inuyasha."

"Guess that means it's my turn," Miroku muttered grimly. Then he was sprinting forward too, pulling an ofuda from his robes as he did. Kagome bent her bow experimentally, fingers and arms trembling as she did, and the string slipped from her fingers.

"Face judgement!" Miroku bellowed as he tossed the scrap of paper forward. The rings on his staff were jingling, sounding as merry and bright and fierce as war bells as he grabbed it and slammed it down after the talisman, and Kagome briefly gaped and felt herself weak with relief and vague disgust as the blow split open the monster's skull like an overripe melon. Blood and bits of brain tissue flew from the split, and for a moment she thought it was over. But then the sword swung again, and Miroku barely had the time to get his staff between him and the blade before it hit so hard that it threw him backwards into Sango and knocked both of them sprawling, with a bright ring of ivory-steel against brass.

"It really is the sword that’s in charge here," Inuyasha gasped. The lone figure resumed its movement, advancing steadily towards them as blood and little jellied flecks of brains dribbled down his face.

“It’s possible for demons to survive that?” she asked quietly, shocked and horrified and terrified all at once.

“Nah, he’s dead,” Inuyasha said curtly. “Like he’s been saying, it’s the sword that’s in charge.” Somehow the answer made it worse. He was not running, but he was not far away, and Inuyasha shifted. “Kagome, take the runt,” he said quietly, with his eyes fixed on the figure as it moved its inexorable way towards him.

"I told you, you idiot, if you try to fight him you'll get killed," Shippou snarled. Kagome clung to Inuyasha’s sleeve.

"Maybe you could run," she whispered, "it has to be almost dawn." The sky looked tinged with gray already.

"What, and leave all you to get killed?" the boy asked. "No way! Now take 'im!"

Inuyasha ripped Shippou from his shoulder and tossed him at Kagome as he took off running, right into danger, just like he always did, and as Kagome finally started paying attention she felt the cold he was running into like an arctic sea.

Kagome was so used to standing behind her friends, Shippou on her shoulder, hands white knuckled and clasped as she watched them throw themselves forward one after another. Her friends were very capable. She knew that. In many cases their skills were much better suited to the conflict than hers. She knew that too. Kagome did not have the weapon or the skills to get too close to an enemy, and her mastery of the bow was still bare enough that it was not often that useful, except in desperate circumstances. Everything so often moved too fast. It was different this time. It was always different when Inuyasha didn't have his powers.

Desperate, Kagome nocked an arrow as Inuyasha ran forwards, and her arms trembled as she bent the bow. The corpse and the sword were no further than than the targets Sango had her practice with, but she had barely slept, and she had spent so much of her strength in trying to hone her skill. The arrow slipped from her fingers and she gasped, and wanted to cry as she watched it sail off in a burst of light and completely miss the target. She was still fumbling for another arrow as Inuyasha got there, ducked under the sword and punched, and had only managed to grab one as he was slashed across the torso. He screamed, raggedly, as the force of the blow and the force of the sword threw him back.

“ _Inuyasha!_ ” she screamed, and before she drew another breath a three eyed bull fell from the sky and landed beside her. The old man riding cross legged on top peered at the scene in front of them as the youkai began advancing again towards the limp human boy.

“That looks like Kaijinbou,” he muttered as she looked up frantically, and Kagome felt herself pushed to the edge of hysteria.

“ _Do_ something!” she begged, desperately.

“That young fool. He got himself possessed, didn’t he?”

Tetsusaiga in its scabbard was dangling from Toutousai’s hands, and Kagome snatched it from him (Shippo yelped and jumped off her shoulder, and she could hear him yelling behind her but she didn't pay him any attention) and started running - if she got it to Inuyasha things would work out, they _had_ to, he’d survived so much already to get here and the lingering curse of a defeated enemy _couldn’t_ be what killed him. “ _Inuyasha_!” she screamed again, able to see him now, even half hidden by the grass. There was so much blood already, and the demon - Kaijinbou, Toutousai had called him, was already so close. Frantically as she ran Kagome unsheathed the sword and dropped its scabbard, and as Kaijinbou lifted up the sword to swing down and take Inuyasha’s head off she threw herself in front of him, lifting as she did Tetsusaiga above her head to block the downward strike.

Kagome barely managed to get the sword high enough in time before the hammer of the other blade fell on it and almost knocked her to her knees with a crash of steel on steel, but the sword held, and so did her physical strength. It blocked the physical blade. What it did not block was the cutting aura, which Kagome discovered as it washed over her like razor wire. The chips of frozen malice tore into her and ripped her skin apart, and she screamed again in pain but stayed unmoving.

"Inuyasha!" she sobbed, begging him to answer her, and in the distance she heard Shippou wailing her name in turn. Blood was trickling down her face and arms. Kaijinbou laughed again in front of her and raised the sword and once more hammered down against Tetsusaiga, and again Kagome held, but as more cuts were torn across her she collapsed to her knees. _Don't let go, don't let go,_ she prayed; false dawn was creeping across the horizon, and her arms were shaking with strain as she kept them locked and holding up Tetsusaiga. She heard Inuyasha start to stir behind her and could have wept, but Kaijinbou was in front of her and he smiled as he raised the sword and she knew in her heart that they would not survive another blow.

 _This is how we will die_ , she thought, and the thought sounded so foreign in her head.

And then the sky split apart like an egg, and white hot light and heat and energy spilled down like a scream right in front of her, and the clap of thunder that chased it threw her back against and across Inuyasha.

Kaijinbou dissolved, trapped in the center of the column of lightning, and the sword was thrown away with any bits and pieces that escaped total destruction, sizzling as they hit the ground. As Kagome looked up at the pearl gray sky with a fading consciousness she wondered if she was dreaming, because she swore she saw the moon, high and pale overhead. The vision resolved itself slightly as the world faded around her, and she realized there were splashes of red like blood in the whiteness, and eyes like points of yellow fire.

"Sesshoumaru," she whispered to herself, horrified beyond a shell of numbness, but then the world completed its fade into blackness and she knew no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews bring me warmth on these cold, cold days.


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